It’s been a month since the first beta for Gnucash for Android went live. The first beta release saw about double as many downloads as the both alpha releases combined within similar time span. I guess we now know what’s in a name (or version tag).

Today I am pleased to announce the second beta of Gnucash for Android. The usual disclaimers apply. As the app get more stable, please still keep in mind that things are not final and could always change. You can grab the latest version from GitHub downloads.

There have been a bunch of bug fixes which occurred since the first beta. The most prominent changes include:

Refactoring, cleanup and a bunch of other stuff (viewable in the git logs)

A few days ago, I laid out the basic organization of how contributions in Gnucash for Android will work. The develop branch is now up on GitHub and is currently ahead of master (for those who like living on the bleeding edge).

The next order of business is the internationalization of the application. We need to support as many languages as we can. Currently, translations for German have been added (thanks Christian S.). If your local language is not available, copy the strings file in GnucashMobile/res/values/strings.xml, translate it and send to me (even by email). Or if you are on GitHub you can put it in the proper values-xx (where xx is your locale code e.g. values-de) and make a pull request.

The string key names tend to be descriptive so that you can understand where it goes in the UI (if you have not used the app). Please do not translate any strings whose names start with key_ or app_. These are used at system level and never seen by the user. In fact, you can remove these from your translated file and let the system fall back to the ones in the default locale. As a general rule, if you are unsure, ask or leave it in the original (en) locale.

Another point to keep in mind is the treatment of special characters like ä,é etc. Please use the HTML code of the Unicode versions of special characters, for example instead of ä, write &#228; and this will be interpreted correctly by Android. The character is directly replaceable by the HTML code inline. You can use this pretty Unicode table to assist in translation. Note that capital and small letters have different Unicode hex values. Also currency codes should not be translated, but you can translate the currency names.

Looking forward to your contributions, bug reports, high fives and all what not.